Ray Madden; Ex-Congressman Served 34 Years

Former Rep. Ray J. Madden, who served 34 years in Congress before being unseated in 1976 by a younger man he had once appointed to West Point, died Monday. He was 95.

Madden, an Indiana Democrat, died of cardiac arrhythmia at the Washington Hospital Center, a spokeswoman said. He had been admitted last week.

Madden’s years in Congress, from 1942-76, tied the late Rep. Charles Halleck (R-Ind.) for longest service by a congressman from that state.

During his years in Congress he chaired a panel that investigated atrocities during World War II and the Korean War and later opposed live television coverage of House proceedings. Over the years, he served as chairman of the House Rules Committee and was elected head of the Democratic Steering Committee.

In 1952, he chaired a House committee that investigated mass murders by the Germans in World War II in Poland’s Katyn Forest, where 4,300 bodies were uncovered. In 1951, he launched an investigation into reports that 6,000 allied prisoners, 5,500 of them Americans, had been killed by their North Korean captors.

Madden graduated in 1913 from Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. He started his political career in Omaha when he was elected city judge at the age of 23.

He moved to Gary, Ind., in 1928 and served as city controller from 1935 to 1938 and Lake County treasurer from 1938 to 1942.

Madden, who never married, continued to live in Washington to counsel legislators after he was defeated by Adam Benjamin Jr. in Indiana’s 1976 primary election. Benjamin had been nominated to the Army military academy after high school.

Madden attributed his long life to giving up cigarettes when he was a teen-ager and avoiding other vices.

“I haven’t sat by the road and counted them,” Madden once said of his advancing years. “Age doesn’t seem to creep up on me. I’m not sick, aching, lame or any of those things that plague older people.”